‘SA buys into Zim lie’

A leading Zimbabwean academic has accused the South African government of legitimising repression in Zimbabwe and has warned that its endorsement of President Robert Mugabe’s regime will come back to haunt it.

Brian Raftopoulos, of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Zimbabwe, was addressing a seminar outside Pretoria in the first week on March on Constructing Solutions for the Zimbabwean Challenge.

Raftopolous said: ‘We need help to open political space in Zimbabwe. We don’t want South Africa to give an anti-democratic government credibility.”

He accused South Africa, Nigeria and other regional players of buying into Zanu-PF’s false projection of the Zimbabwean crisis as a cause for ‘Pan Africanist solidarity”.

The seminar, organised by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa and The Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy, was originally intended to provide a forum for dialogue between Zanu-PF and Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

South Africans attending the seminar included Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini, head of the African National Congress’s international desk, and Dumi Matabane, the party’s former representative in Washington, attended the seminar. However, Zanu-PF boycotted the meeting, while the Zimbabwe government dismissed it as a ‘sign of panic in the British-led campaign to isolate Zimbabwe following a series of diplomatic successes by Harare”.

Leading Mugabe critic Eddison Zvobgo was the only Zanu-PF member to attend the seminar. Zvobgo and his faction refused to campaign for Mugabe ahead of the presidential elections last year, accusing him of clinging to power.

Raftopoulos said Zanu-PF’s dismissive attitude towards the seminar was an ‘indication of the government’s unwillingness to engage. We would have liked to involve the government in a public debate. A meeting like this would have been illegal in Zimbabwe,” he said.

He said Zanu-PF, facing crises over the economy, land reform and political succession, was battling for domestic and international legitimacy. Against such a background, any form of endorsement was exploited by the ruling party.

Raftopoulos said it was understandable that South Africa had handled the Zimbabwean crisis gingerly, as it had ‘burnt its fingers” in the past dealing with repressive regimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria.

South African attempts to promote constructive engagement with Zanu-PF were welcome, but a ‘dialogue which legitimises a repressive regime” was not. He described as ‘an incredible piece of irresponsibility” and ‘a dangerous intervention which legitimised the illegitimate” Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo’s recent attempt to suggest that Zimbabwe had returned to normal.

In a widely publicised letter to Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Obasanjo argued that it was time to lift the Commonwealth’s one-year suspension of Zimbabwe. Raftopolous said the letter had claimed the land reform programme was being conducted subject to normal regulatory processes; that there was dialogue with the farming community; that farmers were being given citizenship; and that Zanu-PF had committed itself to inter-party dialogue. This was ‘factually wrong”.

The South African government had to realise that the Zanu-PF regime continued to enforce the draconian Public Order and Security Act, which, criminalised political parties and meetings. The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act was still being used to gag the media.

Raftopoulos said Zimbabweans’ basic right of free speech had been so severely curtailed that the situation was as bad as it was under Ian Smith’s regime.

Between 70% and 90% of farmworkers had experienced a decline in their direct earnings as a result of the land reform policies. About 900 000 women and children had been adversely affected, while 13% of children had lost access to schools in the rural farming areas. In the coming months, seven million Zimbabweans would require food aid.

Raftopoulos said the MDC had survived despite the battering of its structures and attacks on its leadership. He outlined possible scenarios for resolving the Zimbabwean crisis — each riddled with problems.

The first was to reform Zanu-PF, which he believed was the South African government’s approach. In this scenario, Mugabe would step down, and a successor would replace him until the next presidential elections in two to three years’ time. The snag was that Zanu-PF had no post-Mugabe succession plan.

A second scenario involved the establishment of a transitional government of national unity. Unfortunately, the political space for this to occur did not exist in Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans could also try to force change by means of mass action. However, past attempts to do this had failed because of state repression.